| Brian and Todd Miller lived in a farm house on the outskirts of Branson Missouri in the year of nineteen seventy eight. It was summer time so there was no school to worry about. They lived in the farm house with their mother who worked at a local grocery store and their father who drove an eighteen wheeler across country so he was only home a couple nights of the week. They had two older sisters who were seldom home because they were social butterflies and to use their words, ‘in the prime years of their lives’ which the boys liked to joke it was a terrible thing to peak in high school. The boys had more free time on their hands than any preacher would tell you was good for a couple of boys aged twelve and ten, respectively. Todd followed Brian into whatever it was he chose to do and this summer was no different. Since both parents worked it was usually left to the sisters to watch the boys. Things didn’t always go as planned. One day the boys decided they didn’t like the way they were being treated so they dragged the piano outside and set it on fire. Guess who used the piano? Right. Both sisters in fact. Revenge came a short time later when the older sister was seen by Todd, and several of both of the boy’s friends: hanging Brian over the balcony of the second floor, upside down by one leg, saying “are you going to behave?” After that an uneasy cease-fire existed between the sisters and the brothers. There was nothing written in stone but basically the way it worked was the boys could go to H-E … double hockey sticks and the girls couldn’t care less. On the other hand the boys would be allowed to exist if they kept quiet, stayed out of the way, and didn’t interrupt when boyfriends came over. Any deviation from the cease-fire would result in mom finding out just exactly which one of you little monsters was the one that poured gas and then struck the match on the piano. To which the reply was that then mom finds out about the hanging over the balcony incident. It was a cease-fire that worked for the Miller family. Now that peace had been established in the family, the boys had taken fishing to a new level for themselves. They were able to sell a few big catfish they had caught to some of the people who came down for the summer to live in their summer homes. It was a good life for boys of their age. Along with everything else, they had a couple of dogs, Nick and Nack, who were a pair of German Shepards that went nearly everywhere with the boys. That summer however the dogs had been sent to live with relatives a few miles away because the Millers had a new resident who was not welcome but that they couldn’t figure out how to get to leave? It was a stubborn skunk that had taken to living under their playhouse. A small shed-like building their father had built a few years ago which was a one room playhouse that had a second story which had a slide you could exit the building. So that the boys could spend the night out there if they chose, their father had installed a trap door into the second floor which could be closed and locked so even if it rained the room on the first floor would remain dry and safe. There was a rumor it had also been designed that way so if the girls wanted to sleep out there on one floor that they could stay separated from the other floor. The playhouse was at a slightly lower elevation than the house so the boy’s father was able to put in a zip line that ran from their bedroom on the second floor down to the playhouse where it allowed the boys to drop from the zip line right in front of their playhouse front door. the zip line had just the one handle which had a small nylon line that followed it down so the person still in the house could pull the line back up to take his turn riding down. Often times the boys would decide to go down to their playhouse so whichever boy didn’t get to the zip line first, would instead bolt through the house and out the front door trying to win the race down to the playhouse. Which was a losing effort because there was no way to beat the zip line. In times of dire need, both boys could get on the zip line and ride it down but they only did that when needing to beat the girls down there. They had bedrooms on the first floor so they didn’t enjoy the zip line perk. The playhouse was not currently in use however due to the new resident which came to be known as “Trigger Happy”. He earned that name in the process of what caused the dogs to have to go live with relatives. Their father hadn’t yet figured out how to get the skunk to come out from under the playhouse and go on his or her merry way. The dogs were the first to discover the new resident who promptly announced he would have no foolishness outside the playhouse. This was demonstrated by spraying both dogs and sending them howling across the yard taking turns trying to wipe the skunk spray off themselves by trying to use the grass to wipe off the spray. Enjoying no success whatsoever. The boys spent the next day trying to get the stink off of Nick and Nack. They were mildly successful and were extremely lucky that Trigger Happy had chose to just give them a taste of what he could serve up anytime they felt lucky. Brian and Todd made sure that second round never happened by taking the dogs over to their relatives and chaining them up in their back yard. Brian and Todd called it “doggy prison”. About the time they had to take Nick and Nack over to stay at the cousin’s house, something else started happening around the Miller ranch. They started hearing an eery howling that anybody who heard it would have said it was the howl of a wolf. The problem with that is there hadn’t been any wolves in Arkansas or Missouri since the early nineteen hundreds. So what was howling out there in the forest? The boys didn’t know but it certainly had their attention. It didn’t stop them from fishing however. They continued to go out setting limb lines which they checked around sun up and baited around sun down. It was during one of their morning runs that they began to feel like something was watching them. It was a new, strange feeling which both boys felt but neither could ever see anything when they would quickly turn around trying to catch their stalker. The fishing was good and that morning the boys ended up with six nice size channel cats which they put on a long stringer and threw out into the water. Long stringers help the fish to avoid being eaten by various predators lurking in the water. Most often it was a big snapper turtle. The boys didn’t like to keep the fish in the water that way for very long but they needed to go visit the houses that had agreed to buy them and make sure they were still game. The boys would arrive with the fish still living and upon getting paid they would either leave the fish or offer to clean if for a small fee more. A business with that kind of set up required the fish stay in the water until it was time for delivery. Hauling them to a house and then finding out the people were not home or not willing to pay for the catch usually resulted in the fish needing to be either thrown away or sometimes they cleaned it and brought it home if it hadn’t been out in the sun for too long. They left their catch in the water and went to see if they still had a sale. The first house they visited the people were home and they were willing to take all six cats! An unusually big sale. The boys raced back to get the cats and were disappointed to discover the remains of their stringer laying on the ground near where they had thrown the stringer into the water. Someone or something had pulled in the fish by the line and then either cut or chewed threw the line or perhaps sharp claws maybe sliced the line? It looked like a clean cut which led the boys to think they had a human stalker who had followed them to that spot. Then he watched as they threw the stringer full of those big cats out into the water. As soon as the boys left he or she helped themselves to the fish. Curious though, that they would have not taken the entire stringer. True the boys had tied off the stringer around a small tree and the tie was in somewhat of a knot. Brian remembered thinking when they left that when he got back he would either have to cut the stringer line or lose some time getting that knot loose. It wouldn’t be impossible but just as easy to cut the line. What he found curious was not that the thief had cut the line, but rather where the thief had chosen to make the cut. It made no sense. The line was cut right up where the fish were kept. The way Brian had worked the homemade stringer was to take the strong nylon thread and poke a hole in one of the big cat’s bottom lip. Then he put the thread through the hole and did the same thing with each of the other five fish. The last fish he tied off the thread around its bottom lip. It was fool-proof providing your knots were strong. Brian knew how to make a strong knot. What he couldn’t figure out was why wouldn’t you cut the nylon thread back up by the tree where it was tied around? Why cut the thread down by where the fish were at? The former way you had all the fish on one line easy to control. The latter method meant that those fish were flopping and for all he knew a few of them may have made it back into the water. He hoped they did. In any case the boys had to go back and tell that house they would be delayed probably a day so to expect them tomorrow morning and this time they would have the fish with them. Then they needed to go catch bait which meant either fishing for small fish or using a net and trying to trap some minnow size fish. Each method had its good and its bad points. Catching the bait by fishing meant they would get bigger bait which always meant bigger catches because the smaller fish couldn’t get them in their mouths. On the other side of that coin was catching the minnows which usually also meant they would get some nice size crawdads. Those were killer bait which unlike the bigger bait fish, would usually result in a catch within just a few hours of being put on the hook. The boys opted for going home and getting something to eat and maybe a nap. Then when they woke up they’d decide on a plan of attack. It had been a long morning with a disappointing ending. They were even further disappointed when they got home and found out their parents were going out of town for the weekend and their older sister would be watching them. They had two older sisters. Both were capable of giving as good as they got, or more. As such the boys usually chose to avoid any unpleasantness with their sisters. It was an earned respect which came down to that one afternoon of the burning piano followed by the hanging over the balcony asking if he was going to behave? However this weekend it would only be the oldest sister watching them. Apparently the other sister was going to be staying with the cousins where the dogs were being kept. After a bite to eat and a quick nap the boys went out to get some bait so they could rebait their limb lines and hopefully catch some more big catfish. After doing all that was required to rebait their lines the boys headed home with the sun setting ahead of them. Then they began to notice something was keeping pace with them. When they would stop walking whatever was behind them would stop walking. The boys talked it over under their breath and concluded it was the person who had stolen their catches earlier that morning. They wanted to catch the guy, or they figured it was a man. However they were ten and twelve years old. Taking on a full grown man was asking a lot. Especially since they had no proof of anything so even if they won a fight with the guy what then? Why was the guy following them now? They were coming from having just baited the limb lines. What could he possibly think he could get from them? This is what made them most uncomfortable. They didn’t want to let him know they were on to him so they didn’t choose to run home. Instead they kept up their walk and as long as they didn’t hear the guy trying to gain ground they were going to stay at that pace. It was a very long walk back to their house. Both boys would have loved to take off running for home. It took a lot of composure for the boys to avoid breaking into a run for home. Now that they know what it was behind them they realized if they had broke into a run for home that more than likely the creature would have caught up to at least one of them, and probably both. Things might have went much different than they ended up. Since the boys had decided to not give in to their fear, it likely prevented a predator-prey reaction from the creature which was stalking them. Although if it had chased them down they might not have even put up a fight because the creature looked so much like Nick and Nack that if it hadn’t been so tall and walking on two legs they would have been fooled long enough for it to get close enough to have gotten them both. Instead the first time they saw it was when it was looking down at them from the other side of the sliding glass door. It had the head of one of their dogs alright but that was where the similarities ended. This thing was seven feet tall and it didn’t look like it had a friendly bone in its giant body. It had very wide shoulders that tapered down to a thin waist. Dog-like legs that had that weird bent-the-wrong-way appearance when it was standing on two feet. It had hands with claws which looked sharp enough to have been what sliced their fish stringer. The beast grinned a most malevolent smile at the boys as it began to slap the glass door with its hand-claws, trying to get inside. Their sister bolted for the garage and had the garage door up and was driving out the driveway before the boys had barely realized what she was doing. By the time they did catch on they were watching her in the family car race out the driveway and away down the road, along with the canine beast which was threatening to get inside at the boys. They had time to look into its amber-colored eyes. They could smell the stench of the beast and later would describe it as being a mixture of wet dog and that odor of something dead. If you have ever encountered that dead odor then no further explanation is necessary and if you have not then all the words possible could never truly convey what a disgusting, horrible smell it is to encounter. Then the beast disappeared from the sliding glass door and headed for the open garage door. The boys recognized the possible outcome if the beast was able to reach the door separating the garage from the interior of the house before they did and both boys opted to run upstairs to their room. They didn’t have locks on their bedroom door and they could hear that thing downstairs tearing up the place. It was clearly searcing for them! The house wasn’t that big, it would be coming up the stairs in a matter of seconds. They needed to do something and fast. Both boys came to the same conclusion at the same time. They looked at each other and said two words. “Trigger Happy!”. They climbed onto the zip line and rode it together into the darkness while they could hear the creature busting into their room. Neither boy could stand to look back to see how close the creature was to catching them. They just hung on for dear life and waited for the zip line to come its halt. Then they dropped from the zip line and in stride ran up to the playhouse door and ran inside. Quickly they locked the upstairs door so nothing could get in that way. Then they locked the playhouse door they had entered. It was a waiting game now. Brian and Todd both were praying that Trigger Happy was still around. Please let him still be living under the playhouse! While the playhouse door did not have widows, there was one next to the door which allowed the boys to look out. They watched sa the creature came back out of the house and headed toward their location. Brian told Todd to start beating on the floor of the playhouse along with him. Both boys were hollering and beating on the floor of that playhouse and as the creature with the head like their German Shepards, came closer it was growling and perhaps thinking it finally had them where it wanted them. That was when Trigger Happy made an appearance. If you are not familiar with how things work with the north American Skunk they give a brief warning where they pound the ground with their feet and then they will spray. The dogman approached the playhouse ready to tear it down to the foundation if necessary. It approached the front door and began to beat on it. Suddenly from below the front door appeared a black and white tail. The dogman turned to run but he was not fast enough. Trigger Happy let go a gland-emptying shot that doused the dogman who let out the loudest howl which was a combination of misery and rage. It might have come back to try a second time but then the sound of sirens filled the night air and the big dogman ran off into the night. Next the darkness was pierced by red lights and louder sirens as the police arrived in the Miller driveway. Next came the two older sisters who had called the police. Later when poppa Miller and wife returned from their time away from home he built a four foot fence around the playhouse which had a little pet door big enough to let Trigger Happy in and out but too small for the dogs to get past it. Poppa Miller after hearing from the older sister what had tried to get his sons, felt that Trigger Happy had earned the right to stay as long as desired which turned out to be five years. Most skunks only live three years unless they are in captivity in which case they can live as many as ten years. Nobody knew how old Trigger Happy was when the skunk moved in and nobody knows for sure that it died. He or she may have just moved on after five years. One thing is for sure. The boys kept that skunk fed and watered the entire five years it lived under the playhouse. If that wolf-thing ever came back they knew exactly where they were going and how they were going to get there. The zip line stood ready. There was little doubt Trigger Happy wouldn’t hold up that end of things. The dogman turned out to be at least as smart as every other critter that has any knowledge about skunks and wisely chose to never return. The End |    |